More on biblical illiteracy

Biblical illiteracy is engulfing us.  It’s our fault, preachers and church folks.  We have failed.  The new Presbyterian FOG calls pastors “teaching elders” and emphasizes the role we need to assume.  We need to teach.  This is part of my own calling: to study and teach the scriptures, as a way to tell folks about Jesus.  How are those who don’t know about Jesus going to follow him?  They won’t.  Teaching the Bible on it’s own terms--not as a manual for answers, not as a methodology, but as revelation--is a passion of mine.

So I’m always on the lookout for good texts that explain some points about reading scripture for 21^st century, North American people.  Here's  a blog I read today that explains a way to approach scripture that is a “third way.”  Love the name, too: "Left Behind and Loving It."

Faith Forming Parents

What would we say of parents who wanted to encourage their kids to play sports by pursuing a strategy something like this?
"We don't want to bias our kids to any particular sport, or force our own (or anyone else's choices on them) so we're going to insulate them from all sports until they're 18 or so when they can choose for themselves. All sports give kids the chance to be physically fit.  When Sally is old enough, she can make her own choice."  We'd say parents like that are nuts.  No one can make a judgement about their suitability to play any sport without actually playing, and no child can play without the support of parents.

It drives me crazy when parents say something like that about raising kids to be "religious."  There's no faith tradition in the world that can be fully engaged from the outside.  Most require a lifetime to understand and value. Religion is a team sport are requires being part of the community/team that practices it.  Parents who want their children to have something of a spiritual life have to play early and long if their children are going to have any chance of understanding and respecting their own or anyone else's faith traditions. 

The recent study by the Pew Charitable Trust on religious knowledge was revealing. The U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey shows that large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions -- including their own. Kids and parents making informed choices don't seem to be the case.
The rising number of "unaffiliates" is a worrisome trend for all faith communities, leading in the extreme to the religion of "me." The spiritually isolated individual is as handicapped and dangerous as a person kept in solitary physical confinement for long periods of time--a shrunken soul, only minimally human.
Parents who care about raising fully-human beings give serious effort to being part of faith communities that nurture faith formation--as much or more than they do their sports teams.
What do you think?

More Video Hope

Another video pick: Tent City,by Odyssey Networks
Jesus born here, not to "take over" but to incarnate hope.

Peace on Earth will come, because God intends it.  Jesus lived and died it.  Blessings and Peace to everyone reading this.

Christ in Public Spaces

I am so proud of her. A student at H-BWoodlawn School in Arlington was asked by a teacher to remove Bible verses displayed on the outside of her locker.  You have to understand something about this high school, which is peculiarly set up to promote freedom of expression and inquiry in the education setting. [defacto school motto is  Verbum Sap Sat (VSS) "A word to the wise is sufficient" in their translation, although the correct latin phrase would be verbus sat sapientia (est).]  The student and her friend had been taking turns putting bible verses on one another's lockers as a way to encourage each other.  Lockers, walls, doors and any other upright surface in the school seem to be fair game for promoting a wide variety of thoughts, ideas, but for some reason a teacher called the bible verse-displaying students into her room and asked that they be taken down. They students were both very upset by the teacher's request and took their objections to the school-wide Town Meeting , held every Thursday.  After hearing about this yesterday, I attended to support them today.
Wonderful!  I was quite impressed at the level of discussion and the respectful way the issue was handled.  Both students and faculty teased apart and put back together again a wide range of interlocking issues: freedom of expression, who gets to say what's offensive and must an open and tolerant atmosphere of expression guarantee that no one be offended?; freedom of religion and the constitutional questions, the use and abuse of power in authority, fair treatment, etc.  In the end, the requesting teacher's view was not supported by a great majority of people who spoke.  Both students and faculty members supported the brave bible verse posting students.
I think Jesus is pleased, and not just because I support Bible reading, but because the values of open and honest communication, tolerance and respect flow from my Christian conviction.  Go H-B!

Love these artists...

My "Good News" video of the month/week/day...Are you a trader?

Killing Organization

I love this guy at [D] mergent:  "Young people don’t have the same emotional investment in the programs and initiatives that proved so successful and rewarding to the generations that came before. Rightly or wrongly, what young people hear when churches appeal for help is: “We need more bodies to do stuff we thought up when we were your age, but no longer have the energy to do ourselves.” Instead of reassessing why there is no energy behind beloved programs, dropping them, and looking for those places where there is energy, churches often note the lack of energy, and then try to generate it by appealing to tradition, faithfulness, involvement, etc. Again, rightly or wrongly, young people apparently aren’t interested in propping up programs they had no hand in forming. They have neither the time nor the inclination to do work somebody else is passionate about, just because there are folks who feel strongly that it ought to be done, but are no longer able to do it themselves." See the whole article here 
Folks here know my 'druthers: If no one wants to do it...drop it!  AMEN.  'nuff said.

SBNR comments ubiquitous

More, following the Pastor's letter in our church newsletter, Covenant Call, on SBNR.

A growing category of North Americans are classifying themselves as SBNR.  The “I’m spiritual but not religious” community is growing so much that some compare it to a movement, even though there is no center or central spokesperson.  In a 2009 survey by the research firm LifeWay Christian Resources, 72 percent of millennials (18- to 29-year-olds) said they’re “more spiritual than religious.” [USA Today quoted Oct 14, 2010]  The phrase is now so common that it has its own web presence and a Facebook page.  BJ Gallagher, a Huffington Post blogger who writes about spirituality, says she’s SBNR because “organized religion inevitably degenerates into tussles over power, ego and money.”  Gallagher says there’s nothing wrong with people blending insights from different faith traditions to create what she calls a “Burger King Spirituality – have it your way.”  June-Ann Greeley, a professor of theology at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, has said “People seem not to have the time nor the energy or interest to delve deeply into any one faith or religious tradition. … So they move through, collecting ideas and practices and tenets that most appeal to the self, but making no connections to groups or communities.”  http://www.usatoday.com/video/index.html#/Saying%20no%20to%20religion/34339656001  

Some people are impatient with what seems like the navel-gazing, self-centeredness inherent in this approach.  Lively discussions have popped up all over the blogosphere about the meaning of SBNR for mainline (increasingly old-line) Christian traditions. See the article by UCC Pastor Lillian Daniels and the comments at http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-08/you-can-t-make#.ToNhKev0So4.facebook

A congregation like Church of the Covenant lives right in the middle of this tension.  The generational difference between our members and their grown children is striking.  I hold the opinion that conversations like this are a movement of the Holy Spirit.  God can and does hold us accountable to the way “church folks” are perceived.  Still, it takes a living, breathing community to embody the living Jesus.  That’s what we mean by the church being “the body of Christ.”  How do you think the phrase “spiritual, but not religious” affects us?  Let’s talk.                             Pastor Beth